Dreams have been objects of boundless fascination and mystery for humankind
since the beginning of time. These nocturnal vivid images seem to arise from
some source other than our ordinary conscious mind. They contain a mixture of
elements from our own personal identity which we recognize as familiar along
with a quality of `otherness\' in the dream images that carries a sense of the
strange and eerie. The bizarre and nonsensical characters and plots in dreams
point to deeper meanings and contain rational and insightful comments on our
waking situations and emotional experiences. The ancients thought that dreams
were messages from the gods.
The cornerstone of Sigmund Freud\'s infamous psychoanalysis is the interpretation
of dreams. Freud called dream-interpretation the \"via reggia,\" or
the \"royal road\" to the unconscious, and it is his theory of dreams
that has best stood the test of time over a period of more than seventy years
(Many of Freud\'s other theories have been
disputed in recent years).
Freud reportedly admired Aristotle\'s assertion that dreaming is the activity
of the mind during sleep (Fine, 1973). It was perhaps the use of the term
activity that Freud most appreciated in this brief definition for, as his
understanding of the dynamics of dreaming increased, so did the impression of
ceaseless mental activity
differing in quality from that of ordinary waking life (Fine, 1973). In fact,
the quality of mental activity during sleep differed so radically from what we
take to be the essence of mental functioning that Freud coined the term
\"Kingdom of the Illogical\" to describe that
realm of the human psyche. This technique of dream-interpretation allowed him
to penetrate (Fine, 1973).
We dream every single night whether it stays with us or not. It is a time when
\"our minds bring together material which is kept apart during out waking
hours\" (Anonymous, 1991). As Erik Craig said while we dream we entertain
a wider range of human possibilities then when awake; the \"open
house\" of dreaming is less guarded (Craig, 1992).
Superficially, we are all convinced that we know just what a
\"dream\" is. But the most cursory investigation into the dream\'s
essence suggests that after describing it as a mental something which we have
while sleeping,\" and perhaps, in accord with experiments currently being
carried out in connection with the physiological accompaniments of dreaming,
such as Rapid-Eye Movements (REM), the various stages and depths of dream activity
as reflected in changing rates of our vital signs (pulse-rate, heart-beat,
brain-waves), and the time of the night when various kinds of dreams occur, we
come up against what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the
\"Ding-An-Sich\"
(\'thing-in-itself\'), and find ourselves unable to penetrate further into the
hidden nature of this universal human experience (Fromm, 1980).
It has been objected on more than one occasion that we in fact have no
knowledge of the dreams that we set out to interpret, or, speaking more
correctly, that we have no guarantee that we know them as they actually
occurred. In the first place, what we remember of a dream and what we exercise
our interpretative arts upon has been
mutilated by the untrustworthiness of our memory, which seems incapable of
retaining a dream and may have lost precisely the most important parts of its
content. It quite frequently happens that when we seek to turn our attention to
one of our dreams, we find ourselves regretting the fact that we can remember
nothing but a single fragment, which itself has much uncertainty. Secondly,
there is every reason to suspect that our memory of dreams is not only
fragmentary but inaccurate and falsified. On the one hand it may be doubted
whether what we dreamt was really as hazy as our recollection of it, and on the
other hand it may also be doubted whether in attempting to reproduce it we do
not fill in what was never there, or what was forgotten (Freud, pg.512).
Dream accounts are public verbalization and as public performances, dream
accounts resemble the anecdotes people use to give meaning to their experience,
to entertain friends and to give or get a form of satisfaction ( Erdelyi, 35 ).
In order to verbalize the memory of a dream that there are at least three steps
one must take. First putting a recollected dream into words requires labeling
categories, and labeling categories involves interpretation. Next since the
dream is multimodal, putting them into words requires the collapsing of visual
and auditory imagery into words. Finally since dreams are dramatizations
narrating a dream
is what linguist call a performance or demonstration and the rule, \"What
you see is what you get \", cannot apply, since only one party can see.
(Dentan, PH.D, 1988)
In the case of dream accounts, it is the context, which is vital. After all,
since meaning is context, they are by definition meaningless. David Foulke, who
wrote the book Dreaming: A Cognitive Psychoanalysis Analysis, correctly states
\" that dreams don\'t mean anything \". But people make meaning,
\" as bees make honey compulsively
and continuously, until it satisfies their dreams and their lives \".
(Dentan PH.D, 1988 ).
In analyzing the dreams of Freud\'s patients he would sometimes use a certain
test. If the first account of the patient\'s dream were too hard to follow he
would ask them to repeat it. In by doing so the patient rarely uses the same
words. But the parts of the dream, which he describes in different terms, are
by fact, the weak spots in the dream. By Freud asking to repeat the dream the
patient realizes that he will go to great lengths to interpret it. Under the
pressure of the resistance he hastily covers the weak spots in the dream\'s
disguise by replacing any expression that threaten to betray its meaning by
other less revealing ones (Freud, pg.515 ).
It will no doubt surprise anyone to be told that dreams are nothing other than
fulfillment\'s of wishes. According to Aristotle\'s accurate definition,\"
a dream is thinking that persists in the state of sleep.\" Since than our
daytime thinking produces psychical acts, such as, judgement, denials,
expectations, intentions and so on. The
theory of dreams being wish fulfillment has been divided into two groups. Some
dreams appear openly as wish fulfillment, and others in which the wish
fulfillment was unrecognizable and often disguised. Others disagree and feel
that dreams are nothing more than random memories that the mind sifts through
(Globus, 1991).
The next question is where the wishes that come true in dreams originate? It is
the contrast between the consciously perceived life of daytime and a psychical
activity, which has remained unconscious and only becomes aware at night. There
is a distinguishing origin for such a wish. 1) It may have been aroused during
the day and for
external reasons may not have been satisfied. Therefore it is left over for the
night. 2) It may have arisen during the day but been repudiated, in that case
what is left over is a wish that has not been dealt with but has been
suppressed. 3) It may have no connection with daytime life and be one of those
wishes, which only emerges from the suppressed part of the mind and becomes
active at night. 4) It may be a current wishful impulse that only arise during
the night such as sexual needs or those stimulated by thirst. The place of
origin of a dream-wish probably has no influence on its capacity for
instigating
dreams (Freud, pg. 550-551).
Freud states that a child\'s dreams prove beyond a doubt that a wish that has
not been dealt with during the day can act as a dream-instigator. But it must
not be forgotten that it is a child\'s wish. ( Stanely R. Palombo, M.D., 1986 )
Freud thinks it is highly doubtful that in the case of an adult a wish that has
not been fulfilled during the day would be strong enough to produce a dream.
There may be people who retain an infantile type of mental process longer than
others may. But in general Freud feels a wish left over unfulfilled from the
previous day is insufficient to produce a dream in the case of an adult. He
admits that a wishful impulse originating in the conscious will contribute to
the instigating of a dream, but it will probably not do more than that.
My supposition is that a conscious wish can only become a dream-instigator if it
succeeds in awakening an unconscious wish with the same tenor and in obtaining
reinforcement from it. (Freud, 552-553).
Freud explains his theory in an analogy: A daytime thought may very well play
the part of the entrepreneur for a dream, but the entrepreneur, who, as people
say, has the idea and the initiative to carry it out, can do nothing without
capital. He needs a capitalist who can afford the outlay for the dream, and the
capitalist who provides the psychical outlay for the dream is invariably and
indisputably, whatever may be the thoughts of he previous day, a wish from the
unconscious. (Freud pg. 230.)
Sometimes the capitalist is himself the entrepreneur, and indeed in the case of
the dreams, an unconscious wish is stirred up by daytime activity and proceeds
to construct a dream. ( Palombo, M.D, 1986 ) The view that dreams carry on the
occupations and interests of waking life has been confirmed by the discovery of
the concealed dream-thoughts. These are only concerned with what seems
important to
us and interests us greatly. Dreams are never occupied with minor details. But
the contrary view has also been accepted, that dreams pick up things left over
from the previous day. Thus it was concluded that two fundamentally different
kinds of psychical processes are concerned in the formation of dreams. One of
these produces perfectly
rational thoughts, of no less than normal thinking, while the other treats
these thoughts in a manner, which is bewildering and irrational. Referring to
Freud\'s quote stated in the beginning, by analyzing dreams one can take a step
forward in our understanding of the composition of that most mysterious of all
instruments. Only a small step forward will enable us to proceed further with
its analysis. (Freud, pg. 589 & 608 )
The unconscious is the true psychical reality, in its innermost nature it is as
much unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is as
incompletely presented, as is the communications of our sense organ. There is
of course no question that dreams give us knowledge for the future. But it
would be truer to say Instead that they give us knowledge of the past. For
dreams are derived from the past in every sense. Nevertheless the ancient
belief that dreams foretell the future is not false. (Freud, pg. 662) By
picturing our wishes as fulfilled, dreams are after all leading us into the
future. But the future, which the dreamer pictures as the present, has been
molded by his indestructible wish into a perfect likeness of the past. (
Palombo, M.D, 1986 )Although there has been some descriptive study of the
incidence and character of feeling in REM dreaming, there has been no
investigation of the appropriateness of dream feelings to accompany dream
imagery. It has been suggested that, the generation of affect in dreaming may
not be as reliable as the generation of other forms of dream imagery. Dream
affect generally seems to be consistent with the larger narrative context of
the dreams. (David Foulkes & Brenda Sullivan, 1988) Research by Cohen and
Wolfe has shown that a simple distraction in the morning had a strong negative
effect on dream recall. The study concerned a variable relatively neglected in
dream research, the level of interest the subjects have about their dreams. One
finding was that interest in dreams appeared to vary with sex: woman reported
that they more frequently speculated their dreams and discussed them with other
people than did men. These differences could reflect a greater tendency for
woman to pay more attention to their emotional life and
inner self. (Paul R. Robbins & Roland H. Tanck, 1988)) One assumes
naturally that the past events incorporated in his patient\'s dream imagery may
be defensive substitutions for other more objectionable events of the past.
Through its relation to the dream, the screen
memory, like the day residue, provides access to the associative structures of
memory in, which are embedded the wishes and events, whose repression lies at
the core of the neurotic process. ( Palombo M.D, 1986 )
But dreams do not consist solely of illusions, If for instance, one is afraid
of robbers in a dream, the robbers, it is true, are imaginary- but fear is
real. ( Freud, pg. 74 )
Affects in dreams cannot be judged in the same way as the remainder of their
content, and we are faced by the problem of what part of the psychical
processes occurring in dreams is to be regarded as real. That is to say, as a
claim to be classed among the psychical processes of waking life. (Freud, pg.
74 ) The theory of the hidden
meaning of dreams might have come to a conclusion merely by following
linguistic usage. It is true that common language sometimes speaks of dreams
with contempt. But, on the whole, ordinary usage treats dreams above all as the
\" blessed fulfillers of wishes \". If ever we find our expectations
surpassed by the event, we exclaim, \" I should never have imagined such a
thing even in my wildest dreams \"! ( Freud pg.
132-133 )
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